I agree that the release notes should contain all changes to the sim.

Just an observation, Ben, to extend this one more step in hopefully a better direction than I chose at first. Jeff ran into something that was changed but not documented.

It seems that not everything that’s changed gets into the release notes, and as a result, when a new “beta” comes out, and people test it, they find new bugs where bugs didn’t exist before. Hence, you or Austin changed something and didn’t document it.

A beta test is of less value if what’s changed in the sim is not fully disclosed. Why should Jeff have to ask *anyone* else about the changes to the C172? He and his employer are not the only users, and your reply to him surprises the heck out of me.

It’s irrelevant who requested a change. Just document the fact, not the reason if need be. Not documenting changes only creates mystery and distrust, and we see these mysteries time and again on the .Org.

Maybe the list will get ridiculously longer than it’s been should you opt to change LR’s practices based on this suggestion. But changing something and waiting to see if someone has problems makes more angst for all.

The whole reason I started this reply thread was because I saw something that looked ephemeral and you rightly corrected me. But I now think that my initial itch is because I’ve noticed the problem with the release notes that I’m now mentioning, and perhaps that deserves a bit of process tweaking between yourself and Austin. The windshield wiper was just the straw that urged me to say something. I’m sorry, this is what I should have posted first.

Documentation of X-Plane is a long standing challenge, but for the beta testing program to have it’s best successes, and there have been many, you really need to document *every* windshield wiper that you change, so to speak. In being corrected, I now realize that what would really be awesome is for release notes to be more complete than perhaps they have been. Windshield wipers are important, but if *anything else* gets touched, it deserves mentioning too. Specific and professional mentioning, by the way, not “just tweaked xyz feature just a touch to make it absolutely perfect.”

The better the beta program interface with the testers communicates what’s going on, the better and more quickly will you get specific questions on what was touched. Good or bad.

And above all, thanks for this blog. Being able to interact with you here is one of the best things you’ve got going for the beta program. The newsie bits are great, but when those that beta test read something here, they know better what needs to be verified.

My intent was to use them for lego submissions, as more variety never hurts. Thanks though. 🙂

We will grow the library, but it wasn’t really a goal to let authors make their custom scenery out of our custom scenery.

Ooops — yes, the C172 was “modified by Austin at the request of your employer.” 😉 You’d have to ask him exactly what he did…

Ben, since we can’t copy or modify lego assets is it possible that some assets be moved into /lib so that they are available to us? For example, I noticed some facades at KSEA aren’t listed in WED (SEA_4Panel.fac, 6, 9, 18, etc).

Thanks!

And on that note, it looks like there were some changes to the C172 but those changes were not listed. Any chance we can find out what those changes were? 😉

Fair enough, Ben. I know this is pretty much a Raid release, but I was kind of expecting a bit more meat. I desist… and go find more love for 64 bit X-Plane. 😀

1. Re: libraries – right now, as of WED 1.2b1, to be safe you’d want to set your x-system folder to a non-customized version of X-plane, or keep a shadow second custom scenery folder to hide third party libs.

I do have a note to put some filters on WED to show only certain kinds of library entries, e.g. only non-lib, only default lib, etc.

2. Yes – since you use the resources by reference and not by copying, you can make a payware scenery that uses our lego bricks via the library system.

You cannot copy the textures and art assets of our lego bricks into your own pack though.

Depends – the taxi routes should hopefully not put airplanes through buildings but there is no pushback, so a plane at a gate will often go a little crazy trying to get _on_ to the taxi routes.